


good luck, do you copy?

by markerlimes (sunmi)



Category: GOT7
Genre: Hallucinations, Horror, M/M, Mentions of Character Death, Unreliable Narrator, interstellar au, slight gore, space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-04-09 22:39:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4366910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunmi/pseuds/markerlimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The three rules of interstellar space travel: Don’t turn back. Don’t be alone. Don’t model your space ship’s AI after someone gone, much less someone you expect to get back. minor interstellar au.</p>
            </blockquote>





	good luck, do you copy?

**Author's Note:**

> For the dream team, sweet nightmares <3
> 
> written for the 2015 cycle of kpop olymfics! based off of Ash Gray - The Little Prince

 

 

There are exactly 116 clean cut lines against the glossy, steel wall of the _Identify_  when Jaebum finally awakes from the long nap. He blinks, once, twice and lets the light leak through his heavy lids. The warm exhale of steam clears his senses as he slowly surveys his surroundings.

Beyond an extra layer of dust, nothing has changed. No signs of life have passed through the sleep-pod room since Jaebum settled in earlier this year.

“Good morning, sleepy head,” Jinyoung’s tinny voice sounds through the speakers. “In _Earthian_ units you’ve been out for 7 months, 14 days, and 4 hours. Would you like some coffee to go with that new record?”

“Yes please,” Jaebum replies, taking a seat on the dusty comforter. His fingers smooth out a pattern in the dust as the whirring of the coffee machine sounds next to him.

Jaebum closes his eyes for a brief second, lets the scent of fresh coffee fill his senses, and tries so wonderfully hard to pretend.

 

 

 

The midpoint between Saturn and Messier 31 lands them somewhere right on the cusp of Andromeda where a wormhole presents itself on the outskirts of the coordinate plane. It’s small, almost imperceptible, but the _Identify_ deemed it promising enough to wake Jaebum up for it and that alone is enough to give him hope.

“Please calculate the distance and time to coordinates 3C-612,” Jaebum commands, fingers tracing the dusty screen in fervent, almost revering, strokes. It’s been far too long since they’ve found a wormhole to complete a jump, and Jaebum never likes staying in one universe for too long.

The command registers on the screen and Jaebum waits with bated breath. It takes a moment, but the system pulls through the lag and continues to chime.

“Estimated time of arrival: 2 weeks, 1 days, and 7 hours,” Jinyoung’s voice reads off mechanically.

“Thank you,” Jaebum says out of habit. Machine or not, it’s still nice to be thankful to the single entity separating you from a thousand degree differential between hot and cold and otherwise certain death.

“Shall I prepare your sleep-pod for that amount of time until we arrive?” Jinyoung, no- _Identify’s_ system, suggests.

Jaebum stretches his arms, wincing as his elbow lets out a jarring pop.

“No thanks,” he says, slowly getting to his feet. “I think I’ll manage for two weeks. What’s for lunch?”

 

 

 

On paper, Jaebum has been in space for at least 47 _Earthian_ years.

Deep down he knows that it’s been at least a decade more, but Jinyoung, the person, had always been the one keeping track of dates and times: birthdays, holidays, everything- that it made sense for all the days to collapse into one another when time-space bent around them and no one cared to check how far.

Yet between relativity and the skew of space-time between wormholes, Jaebum is barely pushing the ripe old age of 28, at least according to the dental check-ups.

He yawns, feeling the pressure ease out of his jaw.

A 7 month sleep past the solstice means he slept past his own birthday, whatever that even still meant. Jaebum stifles a second yawn and digs a spoon into a carton of non-perishable rations.

His mind drifts off, ticking back the time slowly and reversing each month, date, week: Chuseok, New Years, Mid-Autumn.

A total of 7 months means that he missed Jinyoung’s birthday as well.

 

 

 

Jaebum grew up across the street from Jinyoung, but that was all, really.

He definitely didn’t grow up madly in love with Jinyoung, if anything their sense of co-dependency didn’t reach critical mass until after they arrived in space where there was darkness stretched wide for miles and enough silence to cover an eternity.

As a general rule of thumb, two-man mission exists- not because the machinery requires two astronauts to pilot, but for the sake of keeping both pilots sane.

The ship is smart enough to run itself not that Jaebum would ever let the _Identify_ know, but having a single pilot in case of emergencies is optimal. Having two is even better.

Jinyoung had come to him first, one night when the ship shook under the constant barrage of solar winds and cosmic radiation. The shaking served as an unsettling reminder that exactly 7 cm of weathered ship steel and tightly packed nanotubes existed between them and an infinite vacuum of space where everything was simultaneously too hot and too cold _(too bright, too dark, too extreme)_ to exist in.

Jaebum remembers the sweat on Jinyoung’s palm as he pushed it against Jaebum’s chest and pulled the two of them into the storage closet- too rattled to make it back to their sleeping-pods. Jinyoung’s fingers had always been quick, fast across the control panel keys and even faster working past Jaebum’s zippers and intricate space suit. He worked a hand down Jaebum’s suit pants and Jaebum let him tuck his head into Jaebum’s shoulder as he returned the favor. Jaebum felt his teeth- the wetness of his lips, and let his tears soak into his collar.

There wasn’t a whole lot out there in space, so it seemed fair to at least let them have this.

To let the gravity of their bodies draw each other closer and closer until morning, long after the solar waves subsided. When the ship’s floor finally stopped rocking, Jaebum pulled away from Jinyoung long enough to see Jinyoung’s eyes red-rimmed and grateful, and known deep down that he’d done the right thing.

 

 

 

If you had asked Jaebum years ago, long before he took off in the _Identify_ , what he thought space would be like, he would have talked a lot about gravity and the nebulous matter surrounding Andromeda and thought a bit about homesickness.

He would have been objective, scientific, like they’d trained him to be back at the station on colony 612 and not spend every minute of his remaining existence haunted by a boy who had spent nearly 20 years so close to Jaebum and then ceased to exist in any of the infinite universes across all of time-space, so neatly.

One morning Jinyoung was there and the next he wasn’t- shredded against the side of a capsized air-lock and charred like the stardust they all were.

 

 

 

In space there is nothing.

No sound. No oxygen. No life.

No gentle spring breeze. No gravity to bring reality back to an already frayed mind.

9.8 meters per second squared isn't much, but Jaebum hasn’t felt Earth’s gravity in so long- hasn’t felt sunlight or the tickling of a breeze against his skin in so, so long. The only thing he’s carried with him for so long are the memories of Jinyoung’s touch, the warmth of his smile and the sharpness of his teeth buried in Jaebum’s shoulder as they fucked across galaxies.

For Jinyoung, there had been Jaebum and for Jaebum the need for physical contact was just as urgent. For nearly thirty _Earthian_ years, there were endless miles of nothingness stretched in all directions, and nowhere but each other’s embraces to crawl into and decay.

 

 

 

Dating in space was weird at first and even weirder was the idea that it was Jaebum and Jinyoung.

There were no formalities of a first date between them. No fancy restaurants or cafes to even stage a proper first date. The best they had were cans of non-perishable goods of various _Earthian_ flavors. (Jinyoung insisted that grape was the worst and after a solid half-year of nothing but grape, Jaebum grudgingly agreed.)

Beyond that, there were stretches of time where their sleep-pod cycles ran counter to one another. For months on end, it was Jaebum awake while Jinyoung slept and then the other way around. The waiting game was horrific, but in space even the idea of another warm, living body is enough to get you through the night’s when the suns won’t stop shining.

Jaebum, learned to wait. Patient and hungry until Jinyoung woke up after a three month long nap in the sleep-pod room and ran a shaky hand through his matted hair. Jaebum hovered, still waiting until Jinyoung looked straight into Jaebum’s eyes with a clarity that kept them both grounded.

“Good morning,” he yawned, eyeing Jaebum’s cup of coffee with a greedy look. “Is that for me?”

Jaebum doesn’t remember handing it over, or maybe Jinyoung had snatched it from him, it didn’t matter anymore.

“Wanna go moon hopping?” Jinyoung suggested like they were back on Earth 612 and their colony was having a great year-end sale.

“Aren’t we already?” Jaebum questioned.

“Something like that,” Jinyoung smiled back, shoving Jaebum until his back hit the wall and Jinyoung’s lips covered his like second nature.

That much of it was never weird.

 

 

 

“Coffee?” Jinyoung’s voice chimes in a quarter past noon on the 5th day and it’s been long enough that the sound of his voice no longer does anything to Jaebum’s chest besides provide a brief sense of companionship.

It took him the better half of solar cycle to fully program Jinyoung’s voice into the ship. Old recordings, birthday messages, he stripped them all and slid them byte by byte, line by line into the ship’s AI.

The idea to make Jinyoung’s voice into a program was a desperate one- a coping mechanism for the weak. But Jaebum’s not weak, he’s just become unbearable lonely.

In space there are no voices to return the favor of conversation to. Except the ones inside Jaebum’s head, and of course-

“Please refrain from standing so close to the glass. At the current radiation levels, the windows cannot block 100% of the beta particles.”

Right on cue, Jaebum catches himself and does a quick half-turn to retreat into the shadows of the hall. The _Identify_ has been watching him more carefully as of late.

“Thank you,” he says over his shoulder.

The silence resumes.

 

 

 

Beyond the silence, there’s another feverish dream that keeps Jaebum tossing and turning at night, or maybe it happens when he’s awake- it’s getting harder and harder to tell _when_ exactly Jaebum recalls the conversation.

Only, recall isn’t even the right word with Jinyoung seated next to him, his fingers carefully perched on the keys of the control panel.

He turns to Jaebum, smiling slightly. Sometimes he is dressed in that black turtleneck immaculately clean as if he’d just stepped out of the shower back on Earth 612. Other times, Jaebum stares at charred skin and bent bones and the portions of Jinyoung shredded against the broken airlock.

Even then with patches of his uniform fused onto his skin through burns, he’s beautiful- pale, bloodless, but so real and _alive_ in front of Jaebum. Jinyoung’s eyes betray no signs of pain even as Jaebum takes him into his arms to apologize. He smells of ash and copper- like stardust.

“Found you,” Jaebum breaths, like he’s rehearsed this before. Maybe he has.

Jinyoung says nothing. His voice belongs to the _Identify_ now, but he nods in Jaebum’s shoulder, dark flakes of burnt skin rubbing off onto Jaebum’s suit. Jaebum pulls him closer, close enough to feel the strands of Jinyoung’s unwashed hair graze his cheek. For a moment they stay like that, pressed into one another like old, weather puzzle pieces, until Jinyoung twists up to look at Jaebum intently.

“Doesn’t it ever bother you that among all of this, we’re only here,” Jinyoung asks softly and for a moment Jaebum is stunned, so sure that the _Identify_ had intruded on their moment when Jinyoung beckons to him. “Well?”

“What do you mean?” Jaebum asks back.

“I mean,” Jinyoung says with a wry smile. “Say hypothetically we don’t exist in any of the other worlds, parallel or not in existence with one another.”

“Then we’re one out of a million,” Jaebum scoffs without hesitation. Somewhere in the back of his mind, they’ve had this conversation before. Jinyoung loved entertaining what-ifs (a terrible habit in space) and normally Jaebum played along just to burn the time (an even worse one). It’s so familiar, so normal, only this time Jinyoung pushes the question harder.

“Hardly,” Jinyoung laughs, moving forward. He rests a hand on Jaebum’s shoulder, fingers curling on the edge of his collar. It’s warm, familiar and the weight of it makes Jaebum’s heart sink twofold as if they’re back on Jupiter where gravity is nearly 25 times that of Earth.

“I mean if we go with the theory of multiverses,” Jinyoung continues. “We’re more like one out of infinite.”

“One out of infinite _whats_?” Jaebum mutters back. He eyes the curve of Jinyoung’s cheek, wondering if he pulled hard enough at the burned skin would the healthy, living Jinyoung reveal himself- like a moth shedding its cocoon.

“That’s precisely it. We don’t know _what_ ,” Jinyoung replies. He turns to the side and just like that, the blood and grime is gone. The grotesque image peels away to leave a Jinyoung is alive and so, _so_ beautiful that Jaebum doesn’t know what to do other than finish what they’ve started like so many times before.

“Isn’t that why we’re out here?” Jaebum suggests and Jinyoung finally presses in for a kiss.

“Sure. Let’s go with that.”

 

 

 

From that moment on, Jinyoung follows him relentlessly. He lives in Jaebum’s shadow, filling the silence Jaebum once loathed with easy chatter. Jinyoung talks sometimes as if they never left planet 612. He talks about the weather, the shops, the people they knew but are probably deceased by now. He talks on and on and all it does is make Jaebum feel _wistful_.

On the 7th day, Jaebum wakes up drenched in cold sweat and smelling of ash. He feels warm, feverish almost from being cooped up in space for too long on a hopeless mission. His mind feels hazy and purely out of habit he wanders towards the sleep-pod room.

Springing from the corner of his mind, Jinyoung steps into the corner of the room and smiles. He’s dressed in all black, in that dark turtle neck of his that shields his neck from Jaebum’s lips as Jinyoung presses forward to thread his fingers into Jaebum’s hair with a careful hand.

Jaebum cups a hand over his cheek and his fingertips feel warmth, as if he wasn’t already crazy enough. Jinyoung cocks his head in question like he’s waiting for Jaebum’s answer when there was no question to begin with.

“Missed you,” Jaebum pants, letting Jinyoung mold himself to Jaebum’s side like they always have. “Missed you so much.”

“Oh really,” Jinyoung drawls. His fingers have always been quick, maneuvering past zippers and shoving Jaebum’s pants down until they’re pushed past his knees. With a smile he takes Jaebum’s hand into his own and settles them both on the waistband of his boxers.

“What about me did you miss?” Jinyoung whispers harshly. The hiss of his breath grazes the side of Jaebum’s neck like a sharp whip, a soft breeze, all in one.

“Your lips,” Jaebum mumbles, as Jinyoung slides his hand in to touch Jaebum. “Your hands, your smile. Your _voice_.”

“Good,” Jinyoung nods, stroking him quicker. It’s been so long since Jaebum’s been touched like this, _loved_ like this that the sensation is overwhelming.

“Jinyoung,” he groans, feeling the pleasure rush through his veins. “Slow down or I’m gonna-”

“Already?” he teases, bringing his movement to a halt as Jaebum continues to rut up against him in blind pleasure.

“Yes,” Jaebum grits out. “It’s been so long. I can’t. Please-”

“You’re welcome,” Jinyoung offers as rubs his hand down the length of Jaebum’s cock in smooth, confident strokes again and again until Jaebum can barely stand from the stimulation.

His orgasm hits, far too early to be noteworthy for anything other than look of triumph on Jinyoung’s face.

“How’s that for a new record?” Jinyoung pants, victory in his voice. “What kind of coffee would you like with that?”

Jaebum laughs, lips stretched so wide that they hurt, when he finally snaps out of it and wants to suddenly retch. Jinyoung the person shouldn't know that, couldn't know about the coffee mechanic programmed into the AI of the _Identify_. Jaebum wants to run, wants to hide, but all he manages is a shaky breath. Jinyoung holds him in place, soothing a hand down his back as Jaebum shoves him away.

“I can’t,” he gasps, feeling the wetness slide down his thigh. “I can’t keep doing this, Jinyoung.”

Jinyoung takes a step back, reflective. He cocks his head to the side and waits.

“Why not?” he breathes. The confusion in his voice is layered and for a moment it sounds like two voices are speaking: one from inside Jaebum's mind and the other from the speaker above him connecting to the _Identify’s_ mainframe. “I’m coming back to you sooner or later. Why do you have to make yourself so _lonely_ , waiting for me?”

Jaebum stumbles out of the room, feverish and shaking.

 

 

 

The _Identify’s_ AI is smart enough not to pry when Jaebum chooses to sleep outside of the sleep-pod room for the next few days.

 

 

 

Jaebum returns to the sleep-pod room on the 9th day and wordlessly buries himself beneath the safety of glass and steamed isolation.

And yet, even from beneath the plexiglass of the sleep-pod, Jaebum sees Jinyoung. Between the thick steam and the familiar ambience of the sleep-pod, he looks nothing more than a mere shadow on the other end. The darkness flickers and paces, prowling circles around the sleep-pod more like a hungry predator than a guardian. Jaebum shudders before the dose of melatonin hits him and thinks he hears humming. There’s a soft voice singing something familiar. It’s pleasant, better static than white noise and Jaebum lets the music curl into his ears before fading to sleep.

Jaebum wakes up on the 15th day, a moment away from the wormhole and the melody of happy birthday ringing in his ears.

 

 

 

It’s Jinyoung’s voice that wakes him up again from slumber in the pod-room. They’ve arrived at the foot of the wormhole and all the energy Jaebum’s stored in years of planning and blind hope returns. He exits the sleep-pod re-energized, feeling clearer than he has in years.

There’s even a hot cup of coffee waiting for him as he enters the main control deck.

Jaebum takes it into his hands and lets the warmth of it soak into his skin. Above him on the monitors, the _Identify_ has the calculations, the fuel compressors, and the stabilizers all prepped and ready, just waiting for him.

“Good morning sleepy head,” Jinyoung’s tinny voice sounds through the speakers. “In _Earthian_ units you’ve been out for 5 days and 19 hours, a short nap by your usual standards. Would you like some coffee to go with that new record?”

The cup in Jaebum’s hand suddenly feels too hot, too cold. Everything at once.

“No thank you. I got one already,” he says with a wry smile and the confusion expressed on the _Identify’s_ interface is startling.

“Explain?” Jinyoung’s voice sounds from the speaker. Its tone is genuinely confused yet at the same time so manufactured, so robotic that it makes Jaebum sick.

Why hadn’t he tried harder to program a better voice? A real voice with real laughter who could tease and joke with Jaebum all day. Better yet, why hadn’t he just created a new Jinyoung from scratch? The _Identify_ is brimming with resources, labs equipped with data on every single biometric of Jinyoung’s down to the bone. At the end of the day he still could. He could, he could, he could-

He could do it all and still be lonely.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jaebum says, voice strained. He pats the top monitor like a child’s head and settles back in his chair. “Just prepare for takeoff.”

From the corner of the room perched on the dusty co-pilot chair, Jinyoung smiles- dark and alluring like the phantom Jaebum knows he is, but in that moment he looks so real, so alive as he guides Jaebum’s gaze towards the unshielded glass. Jaebum has questions on his mind, but Jinyoung presses forward and kisses him sweetly, stealing the worry out of him.

“See you soon?” he mouths against Jaebum’s ear. It’s more of a promise than Jaebum dares to dream of, but he nods without thinking.

Each wormhole is a portal to another time dimension- a gateway to another universe or the same one but at a different wrinkle in time. There are billions, trillions of possibilities waiting for him at the end of the wormhole, but Jaebum needs only one. If there’s a single universe, a single tiny chance that one, Park Jinyoung, still exists in the fabric of space-time, Jaebum will find him. The proportion of one out of infinite possibilities added together one by one meant that over the proper amount of time Jaebum has an infinite chance.

Unfortunately, Jaebum has never had much luck, but what he does have is time. Relativity will see to that.

“Engines check complete. I’m ready,” Jinyoung’s voice sounds from the front, and if Jaebum closes his eyes for just a moment he can picture Jinyoung seated in the co-pilot seat, his feet propped up on the dashboard, casual as the devil.

Taking in a slow breath, Jaebum turns away. His feet marching him forward like a prisoner until he faces his uneven reflection, warped and tortured like the metal it gleams on the side of the ship’s wall.

He looks old. Nearly unrecognizable for someone pushing 28. The human body ages at a consistent rate, but there’s no stopping the decay of a mind. For a moment, Jaebum studies himself. He traces the line of his shoulders down to his waist; sees the wrinkles and the doomed solitude carved into his brow.

In his hand is a knife.

Without thinking he slides a hand across the wall, feels the sharp, uneven ridges between the grooves and wordlessly, slides the knife down. The metal lets out a scratchy moan and then there’s silence, emptiness, and _peace_.

117 and an infinite more to go.

Spattered across the line of the horizon are stars and the enviable stretch of darkness beyond that. Jaebum leans back, fingers coated with dust, and lets the sound of the engine thrusters fill his ears.

 


End file.
